The largest two sectors emitting CO2 in the world are electricity generation and
land-transportation. Therefore, nuclear power plays an important role in generating
electricity with low CO2 emission. An important aspect needs to be considered to ensure
environmental sustainability is nuclear non-proliferation and less amount of radioactive
waste generated. Thus the use of “thorium” as nuclear fuel has received increasing
interest because thorium produces little amount of plutonium and very little amount of
long-lived minor actinide. However, thorium cannot be used immediately due to its lack
of fissile isotope indispensable to start fission reaction. At the same time, electric vehicle
and hybrid-vehicle become more popular as low-carbon automobiles. Rare-earth
elements are indispensable for manufacturing these low-carbon automobiles. However
the problem with rare-earth production is its radioactive by-product of “thorium”. Since
the largest potential of consuming thorium by nuclear power still needs several decades
for commercializing, there becomes a discrepancy in consumption and production of
thorium causing unused stockpile of thorium. Several countries have announced to
supply rare-earth but this cannot be safely and economically done unless thorium
problem is solved. In this paper, an international framework called the “OREEC:
Organization of Rare-Earth Exportation Countries” is proposed as a solution to this issue.
The OREEC has mainly three functions: (1) ThAX, which is a financial collecting
method, (2) Th FREE label, which is certification of adequate treatment of thorium and
(3) The Bank, which stores separated thorium.